[No Title is fit 4 this Great Story]

This story was not however composed by me, but a very close friend of mine. I believe he has a true blood born talent for writing and if you agree please comment, because your words may give him the confidence to further pursue his love of writing.... Here it is hope you all enjoy it. …………And the Shadow fell upon the land, and the world was riven stone from stone. The oceans fled, and the mountains were swallowed up, and the nations were scattered to the corners of the earth. The moon was as blood and the sun as ashes. The seas boiled, and the living envied the dead. All was shattered and all but memory lost, and one memory above all others, of her that brought the Shadow and the Breaking of the World. And her they named the Dragon……….. The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened. Bars of sunlight cast through rents in the walls made motes of dust glitter where they yet hung in the air. Scorch-marks marred the walls, the floors, the ceilings. Blood black smears crossed the blistered paints and gilt of once-bright murals, soot overlaying crumbling friezes of men and animals which seemed to have attempted to walk before the madness grew quiet. The dead lay everywhere, men and women and children, struck down in attempted flight by the lightnings that had flashed down every corridor, or seized by the fires that had stalked them, or sunken onto stone of the palace, the stones that had flowed and sought, almost alive, before stillness came again. In odd counterpoint, colorful tapestries and paintings, masterworks all, hung undisturbed, except where bulging walls had pushed them awry. Finely carved furnishings, inlaid with ivory and gold, stood untouched except where rippling floors had toppled them. The mind-twisting had stuck at the core, ignoring peripheral things. Destiny wandered the palace, deftly keeping her balance when the earth heaved. “Jonathon! My love, where are you?” The edge of her pale gray cloak trailed through blood as he stepped across the body of a boy, his young muscular beauty marred by the horror of his last moments, his still-open eyes frozen in disbelief. “Where are you, my love? Where is everyone hiding?” Her eyes caught her own reflection in a mirror hanging askew from bubbled marble. Her clothes had been regal once, in grey and scarlet and gold; now the finely-woven cloth, brought by merchants from across the World Sea, was torn and dirty, thick with the same dust that covered her golden hair and skin. For a moment she fingered the symbol on her cloak, a circle half white and half black, the colors separated by a sinuous line. It meant something, that symbol. But the embroidered circle could not hold her attention long. She gazed at her own image with as much wonder. A young women, just into her teenage years, beautiful once, but now with lines already etching into the smooth silk of her skin, her face lined where there should be none, for another 20 years or more to come, dark eyes that had seen to much. Destiny Sharack began to chuckle, then threw back her head; her laughter echoed down the lifeless halls. “Jonathon, my love! Come to me! You must see this!” Behind her the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a boy who looked around, his mouth twisting briefly with distaste. Taller than Destiny, though just so, he was clothed in all black, save for the snow white lace at his throat and the silverwork on the turned-down tops of his thigh-high boots. He stepped carefully, handling his cloak fastidiously to avoid brushing the dead. The floor trembled with aftershocks, but his attention was fixed on the girl staring into the mirror and laughing. “Lady of the Morning,” he said. “I have come for you.” The laughter cut off as if it had never been, and Destiny turned, seeming unsurprised. “Ah, a guest. Have you the Voice, stranger?” It will soon be time for the Singing, and here all are welcome to take part. Jonathon, my love where are you? We have a guest.” The black clad boy’s eyes widened, darted to the muscular boy lying sprawled on the floor, then back to Destiny. “Shai’tan take you, does the taint already have you so far in its grip?” “That name.” Destiny shuddered and raised a hand as if to ward off something. “You mustn’t say that name. It is dangerous.” “So you remember that much, at least. Dangerous for you, fool, but it is not dangerous for me. What else do you remember? Remember you light-blinded idiot! I will not let it end with you swaddled in unawareness! Remember!” For a moment, Destiny stared at her hand, fascinated by the patterns of grime. Then she wiped her hand on her even dirtier coat and turned her attention back to the boy who was talking to her. “Who are you? What do you want?” The black clad boy drew himself up arrogantly. “Once I was called Timothy Breyr Comnitmus, but now…” “Betrayer of Hope.” It was a whisper from Destiny. Memory stirred, but she turned her head, shying away from it. “So you remember some things. Yes, Betrayer of Hope. So have men named me, just as they named you Dragon, but unlike you I embrace the name. They gave me the name to revile me, but I will yet make them kneel and worship it. What will you do with your name? After this day, people will call you Kinslayer. What will you do with that?” Destiny frowned down the ruined hall. “Jonathon should be here to offer a guest welcome,” she murmured absently, then raised her voice. “Jonathon, where are you?” The floor shook; the muscular young boy’s body shifted as if in answer to her call. Her eyes did not see him. Timothy grimaced. “Look at you,” he said scornfully. “Once you stood first among the Servants. Once you wore the Ring of Tamari, and sat in the High Seat. Once you summoned the Nine Rods of Dominion. Now look at you! A pitiful shattered wretch! But it is not enough. You humbled me in the hall of Servants. You defeated me at the Gates of Paaran Disen. But I am the greater, now. I will not let you die without knowing that. When you die, your last thoughts will be the full knowledge of your defeat, of how complete and utter it is. If I let you die at all.” “I cannot imagine what is keeping Jonathon. He will never forgive me if he thinks I have been hiding a guest from him. He will give me the rough side of his tongue for this. I hope you enjoy conversation, for he surely does. Be forewarned. Jonathon will ask you so many questions you may end up telling him everything you know.” Tossing back his black cloak, Timothy flexed his hands. “A pity for you,” he mused, “that one of your sisters is not here with you. I was never very skilled at Healing, and I follow a different power now. But even one of them could only give you a few lucid moments, if you did not destroy her first. What I can do will serve as well, for my purposes.” His sudden smile was cruel. “But I fear my Lord’s healing is different from the sort you know. Be healed, Destiny Sharack!” He extended his hands, and the light dimmed as if a shadow had been laid across the sun. Pain blazed in Destiny, and she screamed, a scream that came from her depths, a scream she could not stop. Fire seared her marrow; acid rushed along her veins. She toppled backwards, crashing to the marble floor; her head stuck the stone and rebounded. Her heart pounded, trying to beat its way out of her chest, and every pulse gushed new flame through her. Helplessly she convulsed, thrashing, her skull a sphere of purest agony on the point of bursting. Her hoarse screams reverberated through the palace. Slowly, ever so slowly, the pain receded. The out flowing seemed to take a thousand years and left her twitching weakly, sucking breaths through a raw throat. Another thousand years seemed to pass before she could manage to heave herself over, muscles like jellyfish, and shakily push herself up on hands and knees. Her eyes fell on the muscular boy, and the scream that was ripped out of her dwarfed every other sound she had made before. Tottering, almost falling, she scrabbled brokenly across the floor to him. It took every bit of her strength to pull him up into her arms. Her hands shook as she smoothed his hair back from his staring face. “Jonathon! Light help me, Jonathon!” Her body curved around his protectively, her sobs the full-throated cries of a woman who had nothing to live for. “Jonathon, no! NO!” “You can have him back, Kinslayer. The Great Lord of the Dark can make him alive again, if you will serve Him. If you will serve me.” Destiny raised her head, and the black-clad boy took an involuntary step back from the fire in her gaze. “Three years, Betrayer,” Destiny said softly, the sound of steel being bared. “Three years your foul master has wracked the world. And now this. I will…” “Three years! You pitiful fool! This war has not lasted three years, but since the beginning of time. You and I have fought a thousand battles with the turning of the Wheel, a thousand times a thousand, and we will fight as many still until time dies and the Shadow is triumphant!” He finished in a shout, with a raised fist, and it was Destiny’s turn to pull back, breath catching at the glow in the Betrayer’s eyes. Carefully Destiny laid Jonathon down, fingers gently brushing his hair. Tears blurred her vision as she stood, but her voice was iced iron. “For whatever else you have done, there is no forgiveness, but for Jonathon’s death I will destroy you beyond anything your master can repair. Prepare to…” “Remember, you fool! Remember your futile attack on the Great Lord of the Dark! Remember his counterstroke! Remember! Even now the Hundred Companions are tearing the world apart, and every day a hundred men more join them. What hand slew Jonathon? Not mine. What hand struck down every life that bore a drop of your blood, everyone who loved you, everyone you loved? Not mine, Kinslayer, but yours. Remember, Destiny, and know the price of opposing the Great Lord!” Sudden sweat made tracks down Destiny’s face through the dust and dirt. She remembered, a cloudy memory, like a dream of a dream, but she knew it true. Her howl beat at the walls, the howl of a woman who had discovered her soul damned by her own hand, and she clawed at her beautiful face as if to tear away the sight of what she had done in her madness. Everywhere she looked her eyes found the dead. Torn they were, or broken or burned, or half consumed by stone. Everywhere laid lifeless faces she knew, faces she loved. Her brothers and sisters sprawled like broken dolls, play stilled forever. Servants that had attended her from her birth, all the way up until the moment she turned the light off in their souls. For thirteen years, she had lived, and for thirteen years she had developed a friendship and a love for those all around her. All of them lay there, all slain by her hand. Their faces accused her, blank eyes asking why, and her tears were no answer. The Betrayer’s laughter flogged her, drowned out her sobs. She could not bear the faces, the pain. She could not bear to remain any longer. She would flee, and bring this Betrayer with her, and away from her destruction, she would end him, and with him gone, the hand through which the Dark Lord acted on the world, she would try to reconcile the damage she had caused from the beginning, when she had first discovered the Power. Desperately, she reached out to the Power, opening herself to its flow, and immediately feeling the euphoric bliss surge into her, now tainted by the slimy oil which mingled tangled within the flows. The taint which had caused her madness. The taint which was the result of her arrogant attempt at defeating the Dark Lord directly. She opened herself, and the air shimmered, seeming to turn in on itself. The palace twisted out of focus, disappearing altogether, replaced by land, flat and empty. A river flowed nearby, straight and broad, but he could sense that there were no people within a thousand miles. No people except for herself and the black-clad boy. Still holding on to the Power, she drew deeply of it, more deeply, and still more deeply; like a woman dying of thirst, she drank it in. Quickly she had drawn in more of the Power than any human could dream of holding without the aid of a Talisman, yet she forced herself to hold on to her sanity. She vowed to avenge her wrongs. To her salvation was a lost cause, but at the least, let the histories show that her dying acts were pure of heart and mind and soul. Her body felt as if she were aflame, fire searing her to her core, and the Power flowed into her, as if to fill her with every last drop of itself. “Light! Forgive me! Jonathon!” The air around her turned to fire, the fire to light liquefied. The bolt that struck from the heavens would have seared and blinded any eye that glimpsed it, even for an instant. From the heavens it came, blazed through Destiny Sharack, bored through the bowels of earth, and exploded outward with un-reckoned force. Stone turned to vapor at its touch. The earth heaved, thrashed and quivered like a living thing in agony. Only a heartbeat did the shining bar exist, connecting ground and sky, and surrounding everything for a thousand miles, but even after it vanished the earth continued to heave like the sea in a storm. Molten rock fountained five-hundred feet into the air, and the groaning ground rose, thrusting the glowing spray ever upwards, ever higher. From north and south, east and west, the wind howled in, snapping trees like twigs, shrieking and blowing as if to aid the growing mountain ever skyward. Ever skyward. At last the wind died, the earth stilled to trembling mutters. Of Destiny and Timothy, there was no sign. Where they had stood, a mountain now rose, twisted in appearance, as if the rock in its formation had wrestled with itself. The mountain’s face was as unnatural in appearance as fish out of water. Like the symbol Destiny had pondered earlier, the rock face was two toned, white encircling black, and black, white. The straight broad river had been pushed into a curve away from the mountain, and there it split to form a long island in the midst. The shadow of the mountain almost reached the island; it lay dark across the land like the ominous hand of prophecy. For a time the dull protesting rumbles of the earth were the only sounds that could be heard. On the island, the air crackled and snapped. Lightning exploded outward, and a booming voice from the heavens filled the silence. “YOU CANNOT ESCAPE SO EASILY, DRAGON. IT IS NOT DONE BETWEEN US. IT WILL NOT BE DONE UNTIL THE END OF TIME!” When the echoes of the voice finally subsided to nothingness, the mountain, and the island, stood alone. Waiting. …………And it came to pass in those days, as it had come before and would come again, that the Dark lay heavy on the land and weighed down the hearts of men, and the green things failed, and hope died. And men called out to the Creator, saying, “O Light of the Heavens, Light of the World, let the Promised One be born of the mountain, according to the prophesies, as she was in ages past, and will be in ages to come. Let the Lady of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and the valleys give forth lambs. Let the arm of the Lady of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark and the great sword of justice defend us. Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time………..